Registration is now open for the fifth cohort of the International Diploma Program Building Community Safety, a university extension program offered by the Faculty of Social Work and Health Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, with overall coordination by Universidad Liberté. The program is fully virtual and 100% subsidized through community support. Classes will run from June 27 to December 5, 2026, with 108 contact hours distributed across seven monthly synchronous sessions and weekly asynchronous practical activities. Enrollment is capped at 1,000 students, with the possibility of expansion depending on demand.
A proposal to rethink safety through the lens of dignity
The diploma program proposes a paradigm shift: thinking about community safety not through punishment, but through restorative justice, a gender perspective, an ethics of care, and human rights. It is a concrete commitment to debating — with theoretical tools and practical experience — what we mean by safety, and what policies can build it without deepening inequality.
"A critical and transformative program on restorative justice, sentence enforcement, gender perspective, and collective care. Designed to build safety grounded in dignity, not punishment," reads the program's official description.
A pioneer in the right to education behind bars
The diploma program was born in 2021 with a distinction unprecedented in the Spanish-speaking world: it was coordinated entirely from inside a maximum-security penitentiary and 100% moderated by incarcerated people. The first edition proved that quality university education can be sustained behind bars, with rigorous academic curation and international participation.
Since then it has run four cohorts with thousands of students from 25 countries across Latin America and Europe, from very diverse backgrounds: law students, judges, lawyers, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, teachers, social workers, journalists, and the general public. In 2026, it opens its fifth edition.
Curriculum: six thematic areas
The curriculum is organized around six areas that address the central challenges of the contemporary penal system. Two of them — Restorative Justice and Gender — are also woven as cross-cutting themes throughout the entire program:
- Restorative Justice (cross-cutting): a path beyond punishment, one that seeks to repair harm and rebuild bonds. Dialogue, recognition, accountability, and care for those who have suffered.
- Gender (cross-cutting): confronting gender inequalities inside and outside of prison. Community safety policies with a gender perspective that center the care of women and LGBTIQ+ people.
- Mental Health and Family: incarceration devastates subjectivity and with it dismantles family ties, relationships, children, friendships. Mental health as a fundamental right.
- Work and Self-Management: work in incarceration must not be punishment or exploitation. Cooperative self-management, popular economy, food sovereignty.
- Education: education in prison is not a reward or a temporary escape — it is a right, a commitment to oneself, a window to the world.
- Sentence Enforcement: reviewing how sentences are carried out through a human rights lens. Alternatives that do not sever bonds or deepen exclusion.
International faculty
The diploma program has 29 faculty members from Argentina, Peru, Spain, Colombia, and Ecuador. Among the notable figures is Raúl Eugenio Zaffaroni, former Justice of the Argentine Supreme Court and a leading voice in Latin American criminal law. Overall coordination is led by Lic. Ricardo Augman and Dra. Diana Esther Márquez.
Open to the entire community
The program requires no prior academic credentials and is aimed at incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, crime victims, affected families and communities, prison staff, legal professionals, mental health practitioners, social workers, criminologists, as well as teachers, students, and anyone interested in rethinking community safety.
The methodology combines synchronous sessions via Zoom with a Virtual Campus, a YouTube channel, and Radio Liberté (online and FM). For those in penitentiary units in Buenos Aires province where Universidad Liberté has a presence, sessions are also broadcast over FM radio and through University Student Centers — a concrete way of guaranteeing the right to education behind bars.
Endorsements and partnerships
The diploma program is backed by a Latin American and European network of twelve organizations: the Federación Argentina de Cooperativas de Crédito (FACC), Víctimas por la Paz, the Asociación Argentina de la Justicia de Ejecución Penal (AAJEP), the Corporación Activos por los Derechos Humanos, the Semillero de Penitenciario y DDHH of the Universidad de Antioquia, Famílies de Presos a Catalunya, the Observatorio del Sistema Penal y Derechos Humanos (OSPDH) of the Universidad de Barcelona, the Sociedad Argentina de Justicia Restaurativa, the Federación de Cooperativas de Trabajo de la República Argentina, the Academia Latinoamericana de Derecho Penal y Penitenciario (ALDP), and the Instituto Brasileiro de Direitos Humanos (IBDH).
How to register
Registration is already open and can be completed through the form available on the program's official page. Inquiries can be sent by email to formacion@universidadliberte.org and by WhatsApp at +54 9 223 678-9264.
Participants who complete 75% of the sessions and submit the practical activities receive a University Extension Diploma issued by the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, through the Office of Extension of the Faculty of Social Work and Health Sciences (Resolution RS 103-33/24).
Full details on the program, curriculum, and faculty are available on the diploma program page.
